Frank Carlson Library

In 1959, Olathe, Kansas, was made famous by the murder of the Clutter family and Truman Capote's groundbreaking book on the crime, In Cold Blood. But fewer know that Olathe achieved notoriety again in 1982, when a member of Olathe's growing Evangelical Christian population, a gentle man named David Harmon, was bludgeoned to death while sleeping-the force of the blows crushing his face beyond recognition. Suspicion quickly fell on David's wife, Melinda,...

"Fifty years ago, Heinrich "Henry" Rohling was a German POW in Camp Conrad. Now widowed and in his seventies, he journeys back to Conrad, Kansas, to join in a POW reunion. And to correct the American verdict that his friend Novak died of suicide many years ago. At the reunion, Henry meets familiar faces: Reinhardt, the former colonel who ran the inside of Camp Conrad with an iron fist, Emily, the farm girl Henry fell for and left behind, and Kimmel,...

Fictionalized tale of Truman Capote's time in Middle America researching In Cold Blood, his revolutionary experiment in the non-fiction "novel." Capote's struggles with the town, the betrayal, and his own troubled past make this book a compelling portait of one of the greatest literary talents of the 20th century.